


Twisted

by brokenmemento



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Drama, F/F, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:47:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22642069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: There are always two halves to any story, to sides on every coin. When both of their lives get flipped into the air, Jen and Judy's really only had two ways it could ever go.
Relationships: Judy Hale/Jen Harding
Comments: 11
Kudos: 86





	1. Jen

**Author's Note:**

> Rewatched the series and woo boy, did I regain inspiration. This will be a two-parter and then I have mapped out a really jacked up three part post season 1 fic that I will begin working on in the coming weeks. Give me feedback on any and all. I really appreciate it.
> 
> Also, fair warning: this is kind of filthy.

“Warp” is an interesting word if one thinks about it. Even though it can only function as two things, the imagery alone connected to it enough to send any person visualizing the pure chaos behind its meaning. Jen has been split, two things too. A lot of Jen is warped, she thinks. 

First, it was her body and then it was her marriage. Eventually, it turned into her whole fucking life. And while she would like to attribute the quality of being warped to grief, because grief is good at doing that to a person, she can’t really assign it to losing Ted. Ted just exacerbated the warping. 

When she was told she had the gene probable for developing cancer, it seemed like a forgone conclusion: she’d rather live partially whole than wholly gone. But when both of her breasts were no longer on her body, she had grieved them in her own way. The young, vibrant version of herself didn’t exist anymore because this was the new, midlife version of herself. 

Then grief came again like a wave, maybe connected to the change of her body then, but now she knows, maybe not. In any event, she had thought the loss of her breasts caused the disinterest of Ted. The asshole had looked elsewhere, to more complete versions of women instead of choosing to remain with his loyal, yet stricken wife. 

So Jen had grieved for her womanhood and then she grieved for the fracture in her marriage. It was as if the glass had been tapped and a tiny fissure had formed that grew day by day. Soon it shattered and she was left to pick up the pieces of the life she knew. 

When she lost those two things, even though Ted hadn’t been physically yet, it sent her twisting further inside herself. She was angry, white-hot. When she’d opened the door to the cops, she’d buckled under her own weight. 

The grief of losing Ted completely warped her beyond repair. It made her some version of herself that she didn’t recognize. Yes, she still woke up every single godforsaken day and put business clothing on her body to hawk overpriced homes to the rich and vain. She tried to smile and be personal, warm and conversational, everything that was essentially the antithesis of who she had become. 

But Jen Harding though was no longer someone to fuck with. Because that’s what happens, isn’t it, when things fall apart? Everyone around knows that something has been irrevocably changed. Whispers are exchanged, sad looks pass across visages.  _ Oh, didn’t you hear about poor Jen Harding? Such a tragedy _ or _ I heard she’s barely holding up that lifestyle of hers without her husband  _ or _ if you thought she was unbearable before, oh, you should see her now.  _

And Jen really  _ doesn’t _ fucking care. Because she’s warped. Because she’s broken. Because she’s lost an actual flesh part of herself and she lost her marriage way before Ted got steamrolled in a hit and run and yeah, it kind of is fucking  _ poor her _ and a  _ tragedy that she’s barely holding up  _ to the point where it’s made her hate pretty much everyone and everything. 

Before she spins out completely, she does decide to do one last thing to save herself from drowning. She makes the choice to go to a stupid grief share, of all things, to try and metaphorically bleed away the toxicity filling her body. Now if she goes under, she at least tried to throw herself a life raft. 

Grief has made her feel like a hollowed-out shell of herself, a lesser than sort of replica of the Jen she used to be. The thing about being warped though is that sometimes, things can be bent back into shape. Things can occasionally be filled up again.

****************************

She’s just...a fucking lot when Jen has time to recover and actually scrabble together a solid thought. 

She’d gone to the little pavilion by the water hoping the serene scene and chill vibe would make her feel even a hint of a bit better. Five seconds in with a cup of tepid and watery coffee should have been the foreshadowing of the entire experience. But instead, she lingers a little longer than she absolutely should which is how the curious energy meets her.

She resists, god, does she resist. This is supposed to be about leeching everything away and taking little as she goes. She wants to be less heavy, able to move unimpeded without dragging the weight of the world behind her. But Judy Hale latches on and doesn’t let go. 

It’s in that casually cool way too that Jen learns she’s really good at. Like she wouldn’t care if the two of them never spoke again or spent forever together. So she walks away from the grief group with no intention of ever taking a second look at the folded up scrap of paper in her pocket. 

That is until she does. She punches the number to the strange woman who becomes stranger as they speak but also weirdly kinetic too? It’s a conundrum Jen doesn’t expect but finds herself kind of liking at the same time. 

The best way to describe what happens next is a fucking spiral. Before she has time to process anything really, her mouth is moving and inviting Judy to live with her and honestly,  _ who the fuck is she right now _ ? Because this isn’t something she does or has ever done in her entire life. 

Jen sits in her car and screams to rock music in front of her, plops down on the sand of a dark beach and lets the smoke of a joint curl and coil in the air, disappearing like she has wished she would for as long as she can remember. Her mouth opens and says things like “thank you” and tells another living soul that it’s “nice to have you around” and it feels like the arrival of something she can’t explain.

Suddenly, (but not exactly?) Judy is sitting at her dinner table and it’s domestic as hell and they’re bantering as if they’ve done so for years instead of days. With each passing second, Judy grows inside of her and it’s weird to be inside of a body that doesn’t belong to yourself anymore. With every blanket Jen steals and car she smashes with a curious set of eyes looking on, Judy becomes even more inexorable from her own self.

When she finds out about Ted’s other woman, part of her is sick but glad too because he isn’t the only one with secrets now. If he is able to stash someone in his past, have another woman, then Jen sure as hell can too. 

So she stands on Steve’s doorstep and acts like a lover, tells him that Judy isn’t coming back and she hopes he feels it in his heart like she is physically stabbing him in the chest. If he can take away something from her, she can do the same to him. She wants to cut him at the knees and steal Judy for herself, even if Judy just sees it as her being a  _ good friend _ . This isn’t about a house, even though Jen uses the pretense of it. This is about  _ winning _ .

Yeah, Jen is fucked up, but Judy is so beautiful with her great heart and really, Jen thinks she is probably a better person and always has been-more so that herself. With every word like that that comes out of her mouth, she becomes a person she doesn’t even recognize. 

She’s at grief retreats now and feeling Judy’s warm hand on her skin and that changes her just a little bit more as well. She knows what’s happening, is acutely aware of it. Drowning it with alcohol, trying to fuck it out of herself, pouring it out with pounds of tears doesn’t help her escape from it either.

Life, the unending dumpster fire that she wakes up to every morning, hands her being a shitty parent in addition to failing as a woman, a wife, a daughter in law. And the thing about fires is they keep burning and destroy everything they touch. So it’s no wonder that her job goes belly up too.

The river that seems to stay on her face is flowing well when she finds the contact in her phone and dials. Somehow, she knows her voice will calm the raging sadness in her-only the line doesn’t ever get filled with her sound. It gets filled with Jen’s.

“I need you,” she all but breaks and it startles her ears to hear it. “Gross, sorry.” She hangs up and wants to simply disappear forever. 

Sadly, Judy is just as warped when it comes to Steve though. She continues to fuck him and Jen can’t understand any of it because she never needed Ted like that, still doesn’t even though he’s gone. She’d loved him sure, but he wasn’t a drug, an addiction that needed to be cured. He was a piece of her puzzle that never felt like it would be complete again three months ago. She knows now that simply isn’t true. She was never whole to begin with.

The more yarn that unravels, the more Jen can’t see the forest for the trees. She loves Judy, _dammit_ , really cares for her beyond what is probably healthy and normal. But Jen knows she isn’t normal and never will be. It’s why she decides ultimately what she does. It’s why she corners Judy one night and makes things never be the same for the both of them.

*******************

They were borne trauma, a twisted train wreck and gasoline turned to flame. Jen realizes now, only hours and days and months after the shattering of everything-that she’s been doing it wrong for a while. She wasn’t meant to pick up the pieces of her broken life. It was broken for a reason. Sometimes the things that get destroyed aren’t meant to be mended because better is supposed to come of it.

She’s had to become a creator since the loss of Ted. When things were unrecognizable, she’s had to scrape and claw and shove to get the things she has. So it could be wholly natural or kismet or whatever the fuck else Judy believes in that she scapes and claws and shoves eventually against Judy’s body. 

She does it like she’s never had, as if she hasn’t ever been full. Her fingers are new atop the fleshy part of Judy’s hips, the way they roll with them as she lays herself skin to skin atop the curved plane of Judy's body. She drinks it in, tastes it with licks and nips and mouthfuls. Judy is the variable she never anticipated yet folds into just the same. 

This all goes back to the bent part of Jen, the not-quite-broken but not-exactly-right part of her she’s been battling for a while. It’s what she deserves, to be fit into the category of misaligned. Who fucks the person who kills your first love? Who maybe, perhaps, falls a little in love with them as everything blows up? Jen surmises not many. 

The anger she’s had in her chest for years on end seems to die inside her when she finally touches Judy, lets her fingers touch a woman for the first time. All that she can think of is how it’s like a skeleton key fitting just right into a lock that hasn't ever had a solution before, an answer to a neverending question that’s beat into her chest for as long as she can remember. 

Judy moans and is this what Jen has been so closed off about for so many years? Is it because she wanted to let this part of her be allowed to be free, to exist without having to discuss or explain the why’s? She doesn’t really like to admit when someone else has managed to get to her but as she slides a finger into warmth, she’d be even more ridiculous than she already is to deny the fact that Judy has rearranged her completely.

“Oh, fuck,” Jen mumbles against the sloping expanse of Judy’s chest, breathing in her skin. The mixture of lavender and vanilla and sweat almost sends Jen to the edge and she has to pull back a little, try not to speed to the finality of where they are headed.

“Jen, please,” Judy all but cries and then Jen can’t feel anything but the overwhelming compulsion to give her everything she asks for and maybe all the things she's never even known she wanted. 

She wants to fuck Steve out of her completely, coat her fingers in everything that is completely opposite of Ted. She wants to spend just a few damn breaths being exactly who she is and not hating the human existence she’s been given. Her mouth hovers then covers the woman under her, takes the breath straight from her lips and lungs. 

When she’s crying out Jen’s name on the air, their nakedness pressed seamlessly together, Jen feels the greatest sense of pride she has felt in a long time. She needs to say  _ I forgive you _ , _ I don’t know how to be without you anymore _ ,  _ I am me because of you _ . 

“It’s my turn,” she pants, flips to her back, and draws her knees up in the air.

A bent version of everything she wants to say. It’ll have to do anyway.


	2. Judy

She can still remember the first time someone called her crazy. 

When she sits and thinks about it, it comes back with startling clarity. She’s on the playground and that insufferable Jimmy is back at it again, heckling her for what feels like the hundredth time. 

She’s not athletic or quick, so she forgoes kickball and Red Rover, opting for a more friendly activity like perusing through the book in her lap. The pages of _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ flap against the cool spring breeze, but she can’t focus on the words outside of Jimmy’s yells. 

“Hey, Moody Judy. Why don’t you try getting your nose out of that book and do something else like climb up to the top of the jungle gym and leap off,” Jimmy sneers and laughs maniacally. 

Judy rolls her eyes because if she’s heard it once, she’s heard it a hundred times. About how she can go fling herself off some object and end her presence in his. It’s the same story, just a different day. 

The lack of response from Judy gets him livid, so he shoves down a nearby classmate, Kimberly something or another. She frowns from down in the dirt. “Watch yourself, Jimmy. Just because Judy doesn’t deck you doesn’t mean I won’t.”

“Judy doesn’t have the guts to lay a finger on me,” he says all piss and vinegar. “She’s too chicken shit.” A wicked grin crosses his face, and Judy hears the collective gasp across the playground or at least from everyone in their vicinity. 

It’s big words for an eight year old and everyone knows it. His fame has suddenly risen exponentially, both in positive and negative ways. For the most part though, he’s the playground bad ass instead of the courtyard bully. 

“Shut up, Jimmy,” Judy says quietly and tries to find her spot in the tale at her lap. She just wants to find the blasted rabbit hole in real life so she can completely disappear.

“How about you get off that fat rear of yours and _make_ me,” Jimmy whips back at her again. Another gasp, this time peppered with _ooo’s_ and _ahh’s_ ripples across the expanse of bodies.

True enough, Judy has yet to lose all of her baby weight but she’s not exactly _fat_ , so this pisses her off to the max. Tears well in the corner of her eyes and threaten to spill. She doesn’t want to cry in front of him but holding off the river is becoming difficult with each passing second. 

“Aww, look at the little baby,” Jimmy chides. “Maybe she needs to go find her mommy to give her a bottle.” He laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever said and the school kids like it’s the funniest they’ve ever heard.

Before she can get a grip on herself, she’s knocked his smug face to the ground and is bringing her fists into it. She wails away, punch after punch, and now his scream carries across the space around them. After a few blows, she’s drawn blood and her heart quickens its pace. 

Just when she’s really got his number, she’s being yanked by her armpits up and away from his body which curls in the fetal position. She smiles to herself as she’s drug away by some school staff member. She’s too jazzed to care who. As she is being pulled away, it hits her ears.

“You’re batshit crazy, Judy Hale!” Jimmy stands in the growing distance holding his nose as it pours.

Later, sitting in the office, she listens as the principal yells at her, asks her what she was thinking in an angry voice. Calls her careless and says what she’s done is incredibly stupid. 

Judy stares at the drying drops of blood on her knuckles and sinks a little into the chair. She feels smaller than she has ever felt, even more than just a few minutes ago on the playground. She wants to melt into nothing as a way to escape. 

_*************************_

She hadn’t planned the playground incident and just like it, she doesn’t get ready for the entrance of Steve into her life. He’s got a surfer boy vibe tucked inside of a business suit and gee does he ever make Judy feel alive. 

The kindness and sexy raw energy of him dampen after the first miscarriage though. With each one that occurs, he’s less like the man she fell for. He tells her that she’s messed up, barren. Eventually, she comes to believe she’s broken and irreparable because of his words and her body. 

Inch by inch, day by day, they both morph into different people altogether. She retreats so far inside herself she can barely see out and only catches a glimpse here and there of who he used to be, especially by the Time of Ted. 

Judy calls it The Time of Ted because it’s a defining moment in the timeline of her life. Everything after it is a static and shifty version of the life she’d told herself she would live after Jimmy Salinsky’s face got rearranged a little with her hands. 

Swearing to never let anyone make anything off of her again, she is embarrassed when Steve catapults her back over 25 years with the sound of his voice and the look on his face. It’s the same voice he uses the Night of Ted too. 

The excitement over the Mustang is ratcheting through her veins and she can’t wait to take it out for a spin. They drive it all along the oceanfront, wind up sipping glasses of champagne at a bar in the afternoon, then taking a meal to picnic out. They sit and watch the waves for too long, night enveloping them both. 

When she pulls him to his feet, they make their way back to her new gift. As they go along, they both laugh with joviality. He presses her to let the car stretch its legs, give it some gas to prime its motor really good. She presses her foot to the peddle harder, watches the speedometer creep upward. 

They’re rounding a bend in the road and laughing when all of a sudden there’s a _thunk_ on the windshield. Steve screams, calls her stupid, and then her own scream joins with all the ones Steve is letting out. 

She drives away that night but doesn’t leave anything behind. 

The shouts make her keep going, the shaking of her legs pushing down on the gas like lead. Even though the situation plays out like Steve wants, it eats at Judy constantly. That’s why she arrives at a solution. It’s why everything, every action, becomes full of intention. If Steve won’t let her admit the truth, she will make amends another way. 

Finding out who they hit isn’t all that difficult. His widow is even less hard to find since her face is plastered on every park bench and for sale sign in the higher end part of the city and suburbs. Judy’s got to do something so she takes a day off and finds her realty business. 

By fluke or plain dumb luck, she actually sees her that first day on her stakeout. The second she walks out of the door, Judy’s breath is knocked from her lungs. Her blonde hair is in waves past her shoulders, tight pencil skirt and olive blouse atop her lithe frame. She’s got a scowl on her face, but she’s beautiful and from that second on, Judy wants to find any way she can to wipe it from her face. 

So she learns the patterns of her movements, follows her to the grief share and doesn’t exactly tell the truth about herself but isn’t far off the mark either. This isn’t really about her anyway, not at the heart of it, but instead the angry and breathtaking soul sitting near. 

Judy’s number on the thin slip of paper is a long shot, but the woman takes it anyway. Now it’s in fate's hands. What will be will be. Judy makes a vow to let the cards fall where they may, but with every second that passes, she feels her nervousness hike.

But then Jen calls her and they talk for hours instead of perfunctory minutes. There’s no weirdness or stilted silence like when people usually first meet and Judy takes this as a sign that she’s done the right thing. That Jen really does need her in a way she can’t even know yet.

And what starts out as the intent of an innocent friendship becomes chaotic agony. Jen is an amateur sleuth and Judy knows this should send her packing for the hills but she’s transfixed watching Jen jot down license plates and examine car bodies for recent jobs. 

The poor woman is looking so hard and is so _desperate_ and Judy wants to tell her that what she’s looking for is right in front of her, but then she’s _living_ with Jen and life is just getting more compactly complicated. 

It isn’t the family she has strived for, but she did have a hand in creating the fractured pieces of it, so in a sense, they’re hers and she takes them on as such. Their matriarch is a tough one to crack, but she eventually sees light shining through in very small places and takes advantage. 

Jen feels good in her arms, the uncategorical but fresh smell of her hair, the wafting flow of her perfume into Judy’s nose. She makes a home within these things in addition to a physical one outside of Jen’s door. 

She becomes a fixture at their dining table, an ever present presence in their lives. She tries to tell herself that she’s making amends, helping a family grieve for a man that was worth it, to celebrate and highlight the life she took from them. 

But as time goes on, she decides she feels less of this than she did. Because while she robbed them of a life, it turns out Ted really isn’t worth celebrating much at all. He was a liar and a cheat and how could anyone do that if they truly loved Jen? Because Jen is absolutely worth it and it breaks Judy’s heart when she hears about how he hadn’t touched her in over a year because she can’t imagine not wanting to. 

How could this man have completely kept his hands off of her? How could he have made another life away from her when he had her sitting at home? Yeah, she’s rough around the edges, but she’s gorgeous in an exotic animal kind of way. You have to chance getting torn apart for the right to say you’ve spent time in her vicinity.

So Judy follows her around like a puppy sometimes and like a little miniature tornado to Jen’s hurricane. They’re inseparable...until they’re not. Judy should have seen it coming but it all wallops like a sack of bricks into her chest, her sternum, her gut. 

Tears are flowing down Jen’s face, she’s calling herself _disgusting_ and taking _blame_ for the shitstorm Judy’s started and that simply won’t do. What comes next is everything Judy deserves and nothing she wants because it’s like being kicked in the heart even though she knows it’s for the best. 

Jen is out of her life or she’s out of Jen’s and everything is ending. The point of life doesn’t seem very pointed anymore. Days pass and there is no Abe to take her mind off of no Jen, so she’s left to drown herself in her own thoughts. 

The middle of a street seems like a better place for her than anywhere else she stands so she moves to it yet flinches because even though she deserves to die and feels like she could, she doesn’t really _want_ to. Her phone ringing shatters her reverie in the road and then she’s standing beside Jen who is shattering her even more and when will this all end? 

As she stands by the pool, it feels like an ongoing cycle. Like the snake eating its own tail. Like she’s caught in a spinning loop that will go on like a nightmare until the end of time. 

*********************************

There’s a lot of shit stacked between them since they watched Steve’s body floating in the pool. Since then, Judy’s life has not been focused on that event though. In fact, it becomes almost insignificant compared to the fallout between her and Jen. 

It’s as if she cobbles together the old pieces of herself she put behind a locked door that day when she was 8 years old. She comes back with force and fights Jen tooth and nail. They exchange harsh words, tears never stop falling from their faces, and Judy doesn’t apologize once. 

She’s been a punching bag for too many years, even for herself, and with Steve gone but not _gone_ , she doesn’t have to put up with it anymore. Whenever she’s bled it all out of her, she turns on a heel and leaves Jen standing with her mouth agape. 

It lasts all of two days before her phone is ringing and she’s fucking willpower all to hell. Like a proverbial moth to a flame, Judy flutters with singed and tired wings. She climbs the stairs to Jen’s bedroom, an odd place to meet after she’d thought they would never speak again. But here she is, mere feet away as Jen stands stoic nearby. It’s she who is first to speak. 

“Can we ever get past this?” Jen speaks in an uncharacteristic whisper and Judy doesn’t have an answer. 

All she can do is shrug and leave Jen to inference whether or not they have it in them to repair what’s been beat to shit. But then she’s closer and Judy’s knees are going to buckle because she’s so close to the home she’s made which feels like both yesterday and eons ago. 

Without realizing it, Jen’s backed her into a corner. Subconsciously, Judy’s body must have known that if Jen was anywhere in proximity, it wouldn’t stand a chance and now here they are popping each other’s personal bubble. 

“Judy, be straight with me,” Jen demands and Judy wants to laugh uncontrollably. 

So she does and watches as anger flares through Jen’s eyes and across her face. Judy knows that Jen thinks she’s making fun of her which couldn’t be farther from the truth, but Judy can’t form any coherent words to say that through her taking on so. Judy assumes that is what catapults Jen into her, why she can’t and couldn’t dislodge Jen’s lips from her even if she tried. 

Every single movement is scrape and claw and _damn_ , Jen is angry but Judy can’t chastise her for it because it all feels so _good_ , a punishment she doesn’t deserve for once but is getting all the same. 

Layers shed and oxygen is thin. Judy’s the acrobat to Jen’s choreographer as they both peel away everything so that they can be flesh to flesh. The crisp white comforter is cool beneath her bare body, but Jen’s hands are hot on top of her. 

She’s moaning and then Jen is mumbling “oh, fuck” into her skin. That sends her damn near quaking but still capable of begging for release with a “Jen, please.”

And Jen does. 

Jen works her just so, seals their mouths together and her hand to Judy’s core. Soon, Judy’s crying out and it was never supposed to go like this yet here they are. Heaving for breath, Judy watches a dark look pass over Jen’s face. Not in a dangerous way but like she wants to say something and can’t bring it past her throat. 

Judy watches every movement and Jen rolls over from initial collapse, glances in her direction, and bends herself at the knees. “My turn,” she says and Judy would laugh again if she weren’t so far gone down this path they’re on. 

She doesn’t deny her, but she’s not exactly compliant either. She knows what Jen expects, knows what she’s waiting for as she lays glistening before her. Judy bites her lip, arrives at resolution again, and leans into Jen’s body.

Jen inhales sharply, anticipating the arrival of Judy’s painter’s hands. Judy looks her straight in the eye and grins. With a swoop, she gives her her mouth instead. 

It’s a fucked up love story in the end. One she doesn’t mind telling on repeat.


End file.
